Writing for publication in linguistics: Exploring niches of multilingual publishing among German linguists

• German L1 scholars use other languages besides English in linguistic publications.
• Target audience, object of research, and language competence affect language choice.
• Proficiency in a language does not necessarily lead to publishing in that language.
• Multilingual academic enculturation could lead to more multilingual publishing.
• Academic multilingualism should be fostered in language-sensitive disciplines.

The trend towards Englishization has affected virtually all academic disciplines in various parts of the world. However, some sociocultural and disciplinary contexts are still under-researched, as for instance the supposed ‘niches’ of multilingual publishing within the humanities, especially in those countries whose national languages used to play an important role in international research communication. This paper therefore investigates the publication practices of scholars working at a German university in the field of linguistics. This discipline presents an interesting case for multilingual publishing as it is an inherently plurilingual discipline, dealing with different languages as its object of investigation. To gain an insider's view, interviews with linguists specializing in English, German, or Romance languages were conducted and analyzed qualitatively. It was found that the language use in publications is mainly affected by three factors, the target audience, the object of research, and the linguists' self-assessed language competence. While these factors unanimously point into one direction, English, among the English specialists, they produce conflicts for others, especially within the German department. Proposals are therefore made to ease publishing in an academic L2 and simultaneously preserve the multilingualism of the language-sensitive disciplines within academia.